Yupo Marbled Background

I was playing around with my Yupo paper the other day and found a cool way to combine it with Copic markers to create a Yupo Marbled Background.

As you can see, the effect is quite a bit different than what you get by just dripping alcohol ink onto Yupo paper.

Creating the marbled background on Yupo paper is really simple. Here's my supply list for the project:

• Yupo paper (I'm using the white paper here, but the translucent Yupo would work, too)
• Copic Markers (or any other alcohol based marker)
• Alcohol Blending Solution
• A Splat Mat (Not necessary, but this gets a little messy. I'm using the white Sticky Thumb Splat Mat)

Start by coloring your entire piece of Yupo paper with your Copic Markers. Here's where you can really get creative. Play around with all kinds of color combos. I chose 3 different colors, but 2-5 different colors will work. When we add the alcohol blending solution later, the colors will lighten up, so don't be afraid to chose darker colors for this technique.

I started with my blue color, added spots of green, and then filled in all of the remaining white space with the aqua marker. Try to leave little to no white space showing.

Now for the fun part: Take your alcohol blending solution and gently squeeze drops of it (directly from the bottle) onto your paper. In the photo above, you can see that I've started to drop the alcohol blending solution onto the left side of the Yupo paper, but not onto the right side yet.

Here's a close up of the blending solution in action. It will start to travel and push the colors around. The more blending solution you add, the more your ink will travel and mix. Play around with the amount you add to get the result that you like best. The hardest part comes when you're all done dripping on the alcohol blending solution: You have to wait for it to dry. There's no rushing this, just give it a bit of time so all of the blending solution can evaporate, leaving you a pretty Yupo marbled background.

When it's dry you can use it as a background on a card, or you can die cut it and make it the focal point of project. Today I'm sharing how I used it as a background, but will share a die cut piece later next week.

I used Altenew's Halftone Happy stamp set and Stamp School's Men in My Life stamp set to turn this into a Father's Day card. I really love that this technique can be used for just about any kind of card for any occasion!

So what do you think of this technique? Have you tried Yupo paper yet? I think this Yupo marbled background may just be my new favorite way to use Yupo paper!